Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: BillHarrison on July 29, 2008, 03:59:31 PM
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Hey all, looking to build up an amiga, would like to be able to play older games as well as bring it "Up to speed" and atleast run 3.1 or 3.9 quickly enough to browse the web, email, dtp, word processing, etc.
I currently have a NOS Amiga 2000 still New in the box, and an amiga 1200 tore apart, it had a mouse problem I recently figured out. The amiga 1200 is missing various screws etc from being passed around dissassembled, but all the main components are there, floppy, mb, power supply (Actually from a 500 but it works) etc.
My question is, which of these are better for what I want to do? How important is AGA? I will likely want an RTG card in either case. So does AGA really matter?
Or am I better off with a 3000 or 4000? I could always ebay these and buy one of those with the proceeds?
I guess, if you had it all to do over, what would be the best starting point? What has the most "Available" upgrades?
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An A1200 with either 4mb or 8mb in the trapdoor will suit your needs if it is only to be a games machine.
You can always 'downgrade' the A1200 back to an A500 using something along the lines of Relokick for those stubborn games that refuse to run on anything but the A500.
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Forget Relokick, buy WHDLoad and your A500 to A1200 compatibility problems are fixed....! Not to mention minimal loading times, no floppy disks and many thousands of games all ready to play from hard drive!
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I personally favor the A3000.
Gennerally excepted as the best Amiga built.
It has all the expandabilly you want and will
do everything mentioned in the other posts.
Sell the NOS A2000 to a collector, dump the A1200
and get an A3000 (thats my opinion :-D ).
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I'd say the A4000, it has the most power (and AGA) and just as much expandability, at a cost mind.
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The A4000 is definitely going to be the budget buster no matter how you look at it. But as tokyoracer said, it does have the AGA chipset built-in as standard and is the most powerful of the Amiga lineage.
One factor you also have to consider is space. If it's not at a premium then the A4000 is the one to go for.
*Addendum to my previous post*
Yes, WHDLoad should also be considered so a bigger hard drive and the possibility of an external CD-RM (to store the games on) should be factored into the price.
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If you really want to surf the web and do other "serious" stuff with it with some speed then you need an graphics card, ethernet card and an 040 or better still an 060 accelerator. You would need a big box Amiga for its Zorro slots. On a 3000 and 4000 there are Zorro3 slots which are faster than Zorro2 slots found in the 2000. This especially counts for graphics card performance. So for optimal performance you would need a 3000 or 4000.
The 3000 is a very nice looking machine but lacks AGA (only needed for some games and applications), has some problems with some hardware upgrades (depending on Buster chip revision and the INT2 problem) and has no standard room for a CD-ROM drive. It does have SCSI as standard though.
The 4000 has room for a CD-ROM drive, AGA and more expansion space. Its case is not as nice as the 3000 though and it lacks SCSI. But with the right accelerator you can get SCSI and even faster transfer speed than with the standard 3000 SCSI. Then again this can also be done on the 3000 itself.
So I would opt for the 4000 if you want real hardware; I did this myself. Be aware though that collecting all the gear needed is very expensive and time consuming! If you really need a very fast Amiga with all the options your best bet may even be WinUAE. It's cheap, available and the fastest solution you can get.
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The best Amiga to modernize is A1200.The most expandable and is the amiga that have more expansions on the market (even new ones).You can even put zorro or pci slots and have even more expansion options
My ideal setup:
Amiga 1200 desktop
BlizzadPPC and blizzardvision (if you can get them)
Wireless pcmcia card
Subway USB contoler for clockport
Indivision AGA internal flickerfixer
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He he pretty consistent advice here in this thread!
Anyway don't use a 500 or 600 ;-)!
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I agree! I expected like an overwhelming "1200" or 2000 or etc, but I see there are many colors in the amiga rainbow!
:-D :-) :-( :-o :-? 8-) :lol: :-x :-P :oops: :cry: :evil: :roll: ;-) :idea: :angry: :madashell: :boohoo: :getmad: :crazy:
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The 2000 is my favorite but I'm biased, it was my first computer and I have a bunch of expansions for it already.
You can find accelerators, RTG cards, networking, and so on, for either one. The 1200 has a couple advantages - new things are still being developed for it, so what's available uses newer tech. A lot of it requires converting the thing to a tower case, though.
What's the best solution? If cost is no object, get a 4000, 060+PPC, a PCI busboard, some fancy graphics card, and so on. If cost is a limiting factor (and when isn't it?) then you need to just look at what you can find for both and evaluate how much you're willing to spend.
As far as AGA goes, if you expand the A2k and still need AGA for games and such, keep the A1200 around just for that (maybe with a RAM expansion, as mentioned earlier).
-Jupo
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UAE is a good option. It provides speed and flexibility and doesn't take up space. It's also a good way to get an Amiga laptop. I find myself running non-virtual hardware less and less.
(http://www.therealmartha.com/Smile/smiley_rock_ani.gif)
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My ideal setup:
Amiga 1200 desktop
BlizzadPPC and blizzardvision (if you can get them)
Wireless pcmcia card
Subway USB contoler for clockport
Indivision AGA internal flickerfixer
I'd get an A4000D instead.
CyberStormPPC (all CSPPC has SCSI on them, as opposed to BPPC, and the SCSI is much faster than on a BPPC)
CyberVision64 (because of the build in monitorswitcher)
Ariadne I ethernet card (admitted, it's not wireless, but ethernet bridges has been invented)
Deneb USB card, with build in flashrom
Arxon scandoubler
Maybe even throw in a Toccata sound card, and connect a MAS player.
The above makes you ready for OS3.x, OS4, MOS and with a single screen setup.
I'd say the A4000 and A1200 is on par in terms of expandebility. Often it's easier to get parts for an A1200 though, and often cheaper too.
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Lots of different answers and all valid in one way or another. I agree that you should eBay the NOS A2000 as that will get you the most money to expand any Amiga that you choose to "Build Up".
The cheapest and easiest way to go would be to put your A1200 into a tower kit with a Zorro board and perhaps a Mediator PCI expansion. With the PCI slots you can add the fastest Graphics and Sound cards and a cheap network card.
Find an 060 or PPC accelerator for it and you should be all set.
WHDLoad will solve all compatibility problems.
The A3000T and A4000T are other good suggestions, but will cost you more and won't give you much more in the end.
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Best Amiga to start with?
Very easy: A4000T
- AGA
- Zorro III expandability
- large number of slots
Add a PCI busboard, Voodoo3 & an '060 and you're pretty set. Come on, no penny-pinching here... :crazy:
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I didn't think there would be a day where the answer to:
"I guess, if you had it all to do over, what would be the best starting point? What has the most "Available" upgrades?"
Would be A1200. Today, you have more 'new-ish' upgrades for the A1200 than just about any big box Amiga. You'll still have some difficulty finding an accelerator, but better chances than working with your A2000.
AGA may be important if you want to play old games like you say. There really are not that many RTG games anyways.
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Forget A2000, slow graphics (Z2). 060 is going to be very expensive, and then you are stuck with slow Zorro2 graphics.
I say go for A1200, it is trusted, reliable and well known hardware. You can do almost anything with it, basic 020 machine to the extreme PPC 256 MB, Z3/PCI slots, Bvision. Your budget decides how extreme you can go with the A1200 but there is really no limit in Amiga hardware terms.
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When expanding an A1200 or an A3000/A4000 to the max, here are the major bottlenecks/differences:
- BlizzardPPC (the most powerful A1200 accelerator) uses 32-bit memory addressing, can address up to 256MB of ram
- CyberstormPPC and MKIII (the most powerful A3000/A4000 accelerators) use 64-bit memory addressing, can address up to 128MB of ram
- BlizzardPPC uses 8-bit Fast-SCSI-II protocol (theoretical 10MB per sec speed)
- CyberstormPPC and MKIII use 16-bit Ultra-Wide-SCSI3 protocol (theoretical 40MB per sec speed)
- Mediator 1200 (all flavors) is hurt by the 8MB Zorro II memory space limitation which cripples Warp3D memory usage to about 4MB of video ram (very sucky when playing 3D games)
- Mediator 3000/4000 does not have any immediate memory addressing limitations
- Grex1200 while a good product is tricky to get working with a BlizzardPPC due to requirement of a rare rev. 2 BlizzardPPC board, does not suffer from any ZII addressing limits as it communicates with the Blizzard PPC expansion bus directly, is not as solid as the Grex4000D version
- Grex4000D is rare, expensive, however when matched with a CyberstormPPC or a MKIII card makes your A4000D an ultimate classic amiga, in my opinion.
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my A2000 + exp (see sig.) is all I need.
But face it.... an A1200 seems to be the system for which not only the most past expansions are available, but it's also the system people like Jens are still developing for (the new flickerfixer)
Tom UK
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Hi :-)
If you are after best speed and durability go for A4000.
but it will cost money.
You can go for a light upgrade.
Upgrade it with a 040, mem, netcard and RTG card. And you will have a good usable system.
If you choose to go all the way you will have the fastest classic Amiga today.
A A1200 is fast enough but are often not that stable system as the A4000.
You have too add more bit's and pice's into tight place. If you go for ppc and stuff you often have to convert to tower due too heat and space problem.
And for RTG gfx system you need a zorro or pci busboard upgrade.
And in total this will often be more expensive then upgrade a a4000.
But if you not need AGA. just go for the A2000 you have today.
a RTG card like picasso II is not that expensive. and you get easy a 030/040 prossesor board. Same with ethernet card.
But due to Zorro II bus you will have a slow system.
But is not that slow.
I have a A2000 today with 060 and RTG card and stuff, no problem to use internet, irc, ftp, and other apps.
Buzz
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I defense of the 2000, it has a lot more internal slots/room for expansion, so you can fit it with a 486sx bridgeboard and 16-bit ISA video card and lan and sound card, which gives you two retro computers that are still capable of going online. 3 if you add Mac compatiabiity and and a classic Mac browser.
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I have to agree with the a1200 promoters. It has more upgrades available.
Also whdload is good advice.
For net and etc a 040 is okay, but 060 is of corse better. Ppc is cool, but not paramount. That is unless you want mp3 and video decoding too.
Memory is though. 4 to 8 for whd is enough. For a fully loaded 3.9 for surfing, i would at least go with 32. A lot of Amiga purist will dissagree, and some expansionists will say that 128 is minimum. These are my personal experiences.
So think about how much memory and cpu you need. And then see which box is cheaper to expand. If aga games are important to you, go for expanding the a1200. The nos 2000 is a gem which you should guard well:)
Also when you decide what to go for, ask for parts at amibay, it has served me well. Ppc can be very expensive on ebay, but prices are predictable at the amibay.